Would Someone Please Give Amanda Knox Some Goddamn Blistex Before I Puke?

Predator Press

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Oh come on, you're all thinking it ... but apparently Predator Press is the only publication in the whole damn world with the massive huevos required to pick on a little girl jailed in Italy.

-That thing has it’s own stenographer.

Yikes!

What the Heck is Wrong With My TV?

Predator Press

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Still unemployed (oh yeah … moving here was a fantastic idea), I’ve settled into a morning routine of chugging coffee and watching Lassie Come Home reruns.

-Well, I did until today anyways. Man I couldn’t get my television to work no matter how hard I beat on it.

I’m an old pro with the rabbit ears, and have little arrows drawn that articulate the complex angles required for viewing: Lassie Come Home is due north, Leave it to Beaver is south by southwest (unless I want audio too … then it’s a hair more westward and upwards.)

But today I got nothing anywhere.

Nadda.

Zilch.

-It turns out that some genius has decided to stop analog broadcasting altogether!

Obviously I’m furious. I didn’t spend $30,000 of Terri’s hard-earned money on this 360-by-144 inch Pioneer Elite Kuro PRO-111FD to not be able to watch no TV! Yesterday at this time I could count Hugh Beaumont’s nose hairs, and hear Barbara Billingsley’s crisp, upright wisdom in full mono surround sound ... now I can’t even get Bonanza.

How am I supposed to get my fix of The 700 Club now?

You would think they would’ve warned us or something.

Aside from the Asides

Predator Press

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I was just made aware that my Mother-in-Law skims this blog.

I think this is really cool; she’s one of my fave people on Earth. I’m not going to gush, but she’s top notch as far as I’m concerned: in the past few months alone she has rescued us on flatly numerous occasions. I couldn't possibly put my gratitude into words, and her bond with my son is largely what drew me here in the first place.

But Terri recently informed me that she gets mad when I pick on the family.

-And maybe she’s right frankly.

I’m a little torn here. 99.999999% of Predator Press readers don’t know a thing about who, what, and where we are. 99.999998 readers don’t care. And whatever that infinitesimal percent that remains (I’m not breaking out a calculator pal. You want the answer? You start doin’ some mathematics around here) are people we already know anyway … mostly out-of-state old friends.

But what if suddenly there’s a demand for juicy, juicy personal info -like a huge media exposé, and tabloids like National Enquirer start hiding behind the bushes to capture an image of me and my Mother-in-Law?

I gotta tell you, I’m not seeing a downside here. More importantly, I’m not seeing a plausible circumstance for it (although I am open to suggestions). Okay sure. Ummm, Matthew Broderick gets a flat tire, and while I’m helping him change it I discover Heath Ledger’s corpse in the trunk.

But see how crazy that sounds? I would never help anyone change a flat tire … that’s a lot of work! Mathew Broderick will probably drive around for years before somebody discovers that corpse.

The second theorem on self-stardom would be getting on some kind of reality show, like a blogger version of Survivor or something -“I’m a Blogger Get Me Out of Here” has a nice ring to it, but I’m just spitballing. The last episode is of me revealing to the judges that I had a catheter implanted, and there’s a lot of global controversy.

-Man I hope that doesn’t happen; it’s hard to run like a sissy when you’ve got a catheter.

Unlike the others, my third and last theory of how I would rocket to Brad Pitt-level media scrutiny is probably a little far-fetched.

Picture: Somehow terrorists successfully destroy 95% of our satellites. This utterly cripples cellphones and the internet worldwide, save for the patchy access as the remaining satellites –still broadcasting- continue to orbit.

(Actually, all those people are going to die because the debris from these satellites causes Nuclear Winter. I really don’t know why I developed a backstory for them.)

Okay. So one million years in the future, microbes evolve aaaaaaall the way back to humans and accidentally pick up a signal from that one last still operational satellite. And this still-operating last satellite, for reasons explainable only by good, hard science, transmits two things alone: Predator Press and YouTubes of Welcome Back Kotter reruns.

Sure Welcome Back Kotter would have a new renaissance. But after a few hundred more years people inevitably will start to wonder not only what that Predator Press guy was talking about, but who his Mother-in-Law was.

-I’m the first to admit this could happen.

And that’s why I’m going to end this post, “I love you Mom!”

:)

Predator Press Interviews: Captain Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger

Predator Press

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LOBO: Who are you again?

Captain Sullenberger: I’m the guy that safely landed the plane in the Hudson River, saving 155 passengers.

LOBO: ‘Safely landed?’

Captain Sullenberger: Yes. It was in all the papers.

LOBO: But isn’t ‘landed in a river’ pilotspeak for crash?

Captain Sullenberger: Well-

LOBO: Well I don’t know why you are so famous. I’ll bet there are billions of hilarious pilots that haven’t crashed anything.

Captain Sullenberger: Hilarious?

LOBO: Well, anytime someone brings twelve inches of documents to an interview, I assume it'll be boring. I was being sarcastic.

Captain Sullenberger: Both engines failed due to bird strikes.

LOBO: You had two engines and still crashed? I crashed a van into a lake once. That only had one engine. If I woulda had two, I’ll bet I coulda pulled her out.

Captain Sullenberger: I suppose.

LOBO: And what kind of name is ‘Sullenberger.’ Is that French?

Captain Sullenberger: No.

LOBO: Are you on any reality shows like Survivor?

Captain Sullenberger: No.

LOBO: Dancing With the Stars maybe?

Captain Sullenberger: No.

LOBO: I’m having a really, really hard time making you seem interesting.

Captain Sullenberger: I’m an international speaker on airline safety.

LOBO: Well given the circumstances that’s just ironic, don’t you think?

Captain Sullenberger: I thought you said you were with Time Magazine.

LOBO: I probably did at some point. Hey what’s with the weird mustache? It makes you look suspicious.

Captain Sullenberger: I like it.

LOBO: You should lose it. Plus maybe try a combover. They got stuff you can brush in that would make you look, like, fifty years younger.

Captain Sullenberger: I fail to see-

LOBO: Like you failed to see the Hudson River?

Captain Sullenberger: You’re putting words in my mouth.

LOBO: Words like when you failed the US Airways eye exam, it was covered up? And you thought the Hudson River was a McDonalds drive thru?

Captain Sullenberger: You can’t fit an A320 in a McDonalds drive thru.

LOBO: Not with those peepers baby.

Captain Sullenberger: Stop waving your hand in front of my face. I can see perfectly.

LOBO: Then explain the mustache. It looks like you’re smuggling albino caterpillars.

Captain Sullenberger: It does not.

LOBO: Can you explain your rather lackluster career prior to the Hudson River event?

Captain Sullenberger: Excuse me?

LOBO: It says in your bio you’ve been flying since the seventies. Shouldn’t you be, like, an admiral or something by now?

Captain Sullenberger: I’m a commercial pilot.

LOBO: Do captains outrank skippers? For instance if you were on the SS Minnow, could you have bossed around Alan Hale?

Captain Sullenberger: Who?

LOBO: Ah. Admirals would probably have to study a lot of history.

Captain Sullenberger: I’ve got two masters degrees, and been a member of Mensa since I was twelve.

LOBO: [singsong] Now sit right back and you’ll hear a tale, a tale of a fateful trip …

Captain Sullenberger: That’s Gilligan’s Island.

LOBO: Gilligan was the biggest boob on that island. Why did they name it after him?

Captain Sullenberger: I don’t know.

LOBO: Can you make a radio out of coconuts?

Captain Sullenberger: No.

LOBO: A generator out of a stationary bicycle?

Captain Sullenberger: No.

LOBO: A car out of palm fronds?

Captain Sullenberger: No.

LOBO: Sweet Jesus help me out here! If I publish an interview this boring on Predator Press, the readers will have me flayed!

Captain Sullenberger: I’m sorry. I’m trying.

LOBO: Ever bomb the crap out of Charlie?

Captain Sullenberger: I was eight years old during the Vietnam War.

LOBO: Japs?

Captain Sullenberger: That was even earlier. I would have been negative twelve or so.

LOBO: C’mon buddy. This is a Predator Press interview. Can’t you just make something up?

Captain Sullenberger: Like what? I went back in time?

LOBO: Did you kill Hitler?

Captain Sullenberger: No.

LOBO: Well, the whole ‘back in time’ thing would be pretty flaccid then.

Captain Sullenberger: Can I go now?

LOBO: This is your office.

Captain Sullenberger: I don’t care.

LOBO: Are you going to McDonalds? I love McDonalds!

Predator Press Movie-Middle Reviews: Jet Li's "The One"

Predator Press

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Sure there’s a million sites out there that review movies.

But you know how sometimes you want to watch television and a decent movie has already been playing for a half an hour?

That’s our niche.

I’m proud to present Predator Press Movie-Middle Reviews, and the historic first Movie Middle to be reviewed will be The One staring action hero Jet Li.

Just getting in from grocery shopping, Terri and I started this movie 24 minutes in where we found Jet Li playing a character that liked to karate chop people a lot. So much so, at some point he karate chopped guys with motorcycles. Heck, at some point he even ended up karate chopping himself! Maybe he ran out of other people to karate chop, or maybe the cameramen and editors simply got confused in a karate chop filming frenzy -I don't know. But the money they saved on casting is clearly reflected in the heavily-researched accuracy you've come to expect in law enforcement documentaries.

Despite having a number in the title, this movie is completely devoid of boring mathematics altogether: it's karate choppin a go-go. The One is an intense, riveting classic drama I couldn’t take my eyes off of until the microwave beeped that the popcorn was done; by the time I got back with the bowl Terri had changed the channel to Desperate Housewives (at which point I decided to wash the car).

Man I don’t think I’ve ever seen more karate chops in eighteen minutes: Predator Press Movie-Middle Reviews scores the middle of The One with a hefty eighty seven “Thumbs Up,” making it the highest rated Predator Press Movie-Middle Review so far, and a juggernaut of the short attention span.

Be sure to tune in for our next installment where we scathingly eviscerate the middle of “The Sixth Sense”: this movie has no violence or nudity at all, and instead it features a bunch of lazy zombies lolling around and bein' nice to everybody.

Despite being buoyed by Haley Joel Osment’s cuteness, this is doubtlessly the worst movie-middle ever made. The Sixth Sense will stagger out a critical failure, ultimately garnering a mere sixty-one "Thumbs Up."

Tops.

It Takes a Child to Raze a Village

Predator Press

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Playing a lot of Final Fantasy XII, I can only guess how many marriages and careers have been wrecked by this highly addictive game ... I’m already beginning to hallucinate little blue and red health bars hovering over people’s heads. But when Screechy (our six year old) was stricken by an unmerciful God with pinkeye, it kinda “shook me out of it.”

It was time for comedy.

A year or so ago Crackers, his oldest sister, playfully sprayed his neck with a perfume ... and as a result Screechy is also affectionately known as “Stinkneck.” Now of course with pinkeye, I say he has “Stinkeye” too. Psychotherapeutic technique is improving all the time, and he’s get a good ten years until then … let's get our laughs in early and often.

So I’m watching television and commiserating with him, and Go, Diego, Go! comes on. I’m immediately suspicious. I never trust children’s programming that wears punctuation like a two dollar whore, and in three words we have two commas and exclamation point. Is that even a sentence? Then it turns out this “Diego” character is a spinoff of another show called Dora the Explorer. So now I have huge chasms of missing information, and the first of which is their resemblance: is it a byproduct of the cartoon style, or is asking this question the equivalent of a racist comment on par with “all Hispanics look alike”?

Okay I’m like eight minutes into the show and I’m stressing out in a soiree of Politically Correct confusion. I speed-dial Terri, and she narrowly averts my cranial detonation with the news that Diego and Dora are indeed cousins -the likelihood if fast forwarding twelve years to find Dora putting a bullet in Diego’s noggin because he came home meth-addled and covered in lipstick, glitter, and Safari perfume are significantly reduced. This makes it all "come together" really: the glaring absence of Dora and Diego's parents -the ones that let their kids run around jungles and play with wild animals unsupervised- is now explainable ... they were obviously jailed long, long ago for child endangerment and neglect.

But just as I hung up the phone and the anxiety began to pass, Diego was now rescuing a Chinchilla on a breaking tree branch from falling into a waterfall with a hang glider. And even as I tried to piece together all the improbable physics required for this to occur, the Chinchilla looked at Diego and said -plain as day- “Gracias.”

Seething once again with questions, I tried to call Terri again ... but I kept getting her voicemail.

If the Chinchilla is bilingual, isn’t it fair to say that the stupid thing shouldn’t have been on that tree branch in the first place? And if I found out I just risked life and limb (and let’s face it: hang gliders are probably expensive) for a creature perfectly qualified to score a few hundred points on a SAT that I couldn't sue, I would be really mad.

And wouldn't a Chinchilla being rescued from falling into a waterfall by a kid on a hang glider be, well, freaky for a Chinchilla? This would be the human equivalent of a UFO abduction. Maybe the aliens are snatching up those people to try and explain why they should get the hell away from the trailer park before the tornado comes, but once confronted with the staggering opacity of the individuals, the discouraged aliens just anal probe the daylights out of them in sheer frustration.

Well, we’re all thinkin’ it so I’m just going to come right out and say it: we've been coddling the Chinchilla for far too long now, and it's high time they switched habitats with the trailer park people. The trailer park people would be far safer in the mountains where there aren’t any tornados, and the Spanish-speaking Chinchillas would probably know what to do with all those broken down El Caminos.

Anywho, be back soon.

“Backyardigans” is coming on.

Destroyer

Predator Press

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Of the past two weeks, I could regale you with tales of how I vanquished Ragnarok the Colossus –or perhaps even discuss how, vastly outnumbered, I crushed and humiliated Thrang the Human Rototiller, leaving two hundred thousand of his highest-ranking minions decimated, smoldering husks on the beachhead of Des Moines^[1]. But I’m sure you’re already inundated by these stories on CNN and Fox; I won’t bore you with more details.

What I will bore you with is the ongoing fiscal crisis. As a decorated war hero of World Wars VI, X and Pi, you would think simply finding a job would be a snap. But I have made powerful enemies, and nothing gives a Human Resources department pause like the possibility –however remote- of Martha Stewart’s armada returning from banishment in the eighth dimension and looking for swift and lethal payback^[2].

Sure I could just remove that element from my résumé and thusly avoid the issue entirely, but I consider it a test of the respective corporation’s courage and patriotic fortitude; while a particularly formidable foe, I don’t want to work for a bunch of pansies afraid of Martha Stewart –not with the empires of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Oprah Winfrey always sniffin’ around for signs of opportunity and weakness. This would only encourage our would-be oppressors.

“In these precarious and tumultuous times, cowardice amounts to treason!” I says, slamming my briefcase and storming out. “This interview is over. Good day sir.”

-Assholes.

Still, the Predator Press Trust Fund -the one established from the lawsuit when Britney Spears was clipping her toenails and the shrapnel slashed deeply into my shoulder and nearly cost me an eye- ever dwindles. Unless I magic me up some solutions pronto, concessions must be made.

Luckily Kung Fu Master David Carradine’s private phone number is listed in the phone book. Surely he -a wise, world renown forward-thinking philosophical intellect- can advise me on these matters.

I left him a few dozen messages yesterday.

He’ll know what to do.


^[1] Remember Thrang, we're not laughing at you -we're laughing in your general direction about the dumbass crap you always try and pull plus the fact that you're an idiot.

^[2] Martha’s Stewart’s culpability should not be ignored here either: she tried to seduce me wearing nothing but a thong, Latex pasties and a gimp mask in an effort to acquire my recipe for Christmas cookies shaped like the ‘Peanuts’ characters in pornographic positions.

-When my wife Terri found out, intergalactic bloodshed was, well, inevitable.